The 76th Banbury Run is on Sunday, 7th June 2026 at the British Motor Museum, Gaydon, CV35 0BJ
Details of how to enter the 2026 event, book discounted camping and admission for the British Motor Museum, or book an autojumble stall, will appear here in December 2025.
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CLICK HERE for a report on The Banbury Run 2025
Photographs of the 2025 event were taken by the professional photographers Kevin Gunstone and Peter Wileman. These can be viewed and ordered at:
https://kevingunstone.smugmug.com/VMCC-Events/Banbury-Run-2025
https://www.peterwilemanphotography.com/main/gallery/70100-0-08062022banbury2.html
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What Is The Banbury Run?
The Banbury Run is the world’s premier riding event for Veteran and Vintage motorcycles – bikes made before 1931.
The first Banbury Run was in 1949. The Vintage Motor Cycle Club, founded three years earlier, set out to create an event which would be a serious competitive test which revisited some of the routes followed by the test riders from the early days of the motor industry in the heart of England. The event was also from the start seen as a public showcase for the Club’s activities and bikes. The result was The Banbury Run.
The event began as, and has always remained, a sporting event – a true competition for machines from the early years of motorcycling. But it is not a race: the winner is not the person who completes the distance fastest. Rather, it is a ‘regularity run’, where the aim is to ride as close as possible to a predetermined average speed whilst navigating accurately around a set route. Any rider who completes the route and who is not more than three minutes early or five minutes late at any of the intermediate time checkpoints (the clock is reset at each checkpoint) receives a Gold Award. Silver Awards go to riders who are not more than three minutes early or 15 minutes late at a checkpoint. You can be up to 30 minutes late at a checkpoint and still be counted as a Finisher, but never more than three minutes early – going too fast is not allowed.
There is of course a bit more to it than that! Most of the machines involved do not have speedometers (which were not required by law until 1936), and for those that do, the mileage counter must be covered up. The rider must use their experience and judgement to work out how far they have travelled and how fast. The average speed goes by the age of the machine – 15mph for the very oldest, up to 24mph for those made between 1925 and 1930. That may seem easy, but that is far from the case whilst coping with modern traffic on temperamental old machines with primitive controls and limited power. The run is plotted out on the map, checked for safety on the road, and then written down as a “Tulip Route” - a sequence of diagrams of junctions, signposts, etc. Mistakes are too easy, accuracy requires concentration, and the rider does not know in advance where the route goes or how many miles it will cover.
Many riders now choose to take part without being timed, just for the experience and the company, but at its heart The Banbury Run is a seriously competitive – if somewhat unusual – motorcycle sporting event.
Videos of the Banbury Run by Alex Rollings can be found on the Classic Motorcycle Channel on YouTube.
Photographs of the Banbury Run are taken each year by Peter Wileman Photography.
Please note that the VMCC has no involvement with the photographs taken or sales. All transactions and correspondence should be direct with Peter Wileman photography only.
